Its fairly easy

Presenting the communicative notional grammar approach

as a better way of introducing and teaching adverbs

Introduction: The importance of context

Language and Grammar never exists vacuum packed

As it hopefully will become in the following paper, a communicative approach to grammar

teaching always emphasizes the importance of context. Language is seen as a means of
communicating messages between human beings in actual contexts (Newby 1998: 3)
People dont speak in a vacuum, like many traditional grammar exercise books might
suggest. There is for example always something before a seemingly isolated utterance; a shy
Hello, or an angry What the hell are you doing. There are all those facial expressions that
accompany what we are saying: a joking grin or angrily wrinkled eyebrows. All this
circumstances have some influence on the way how we choose to speak and following the
ideas of the communicative grammar approach also on the way how we use grammar to do
so. For example we might choose between a modal verb construction: Could you be so kind
to open the door, accompanied by a friendly smile, or use another grammatical option, that
fits better together with the angrily wrinkled eyebrows, just an imperative: Open the door
In this way it becomes clear that grammar just like language as a whole does not exist in
vacuum but always needs to be understood and more importantly practiced in a context, as
Newby 2012: 7 states: All communication takes place in a context. This is one of the most
important insights of the discourse linked and context based communicative grammar
approach. (See handout Newby: C+C grammar) But not only grammar can be best
understood in its context. Also approaches of teaching grammar dont come from nothing.
And that is also true for the cognitive and communicative notional approach I want to present
in the following pages.
The notional approach is directed towards the unhealthy overemphasis on traditional
grammar in modern language teaching. (See Newby 1998: 2) It is an answer to a form
concerned and product centered approach that tries to treat grammar in the same way
theoretical mathematicians treat their numbers: isolated, without a real life context, but

therefore with plenty of rules and sub-rules. Thats the context of communicative grammar
and the notional approach: an answer, alternative or at least an important addition to
traditional grammar teaching.
But now, in line with the methods of communicative grammar, instead of theorizing about the
characteristics and advantages of this very approach it is better to bring all the seemingly
theoretic points together in a real live story and discuss the importance of this approach and
the advantages of it in a real life example focusing on a concrete topic, namely the
introduction and teaching of adverbs.
Therefore I want at first to discuss a lesson of my own, were I as a teacher experienced from
firsthand the difficulties and problems of a traditional approach to language teaching. After
this case study and a brief analysis of the problems I have encountered, I want to show in a
second point how the issue of adverbs could have been better dealt with by employing a
communicative notional approach to the teaching of this topic.
But for now, and in line with communicative teaching ideas, it is time set up a context for all
the following theoretical talk and therefore to focus an example of traditional grammar
teaching gone bad that might sadly be not too uncommon in Austrian English classrooms.

1.1 An example of a traditional grammar lesson

Herr Professor, I dont understand

During my teacher training I was asked by my mentor teacher at this time to teach her class
adverbs. At this point I had no idea what notional grammar was, nor how to teach grammar
communicatively, and so I followed the teaching ideas of my mentor teacher obediently, as
there was seemingly no alternative to the hard facts and rules of traditional grammar
In this way I ended up explaining to my students what adverbs are in exactly the same way it
was explained to me around ten year ago, believing that this was apparently still the way to
do it, at least according to my mentor teacher.
So I stood there and explained more or less the following:
An adverb is an adjective with that has normally a ly put at the end of the word and it
describes a verb, or an adjective. This is the difference of adverb and adjective, the ly at
the end and that adverbs unlike adjectives never describe nouns.

I knew it was not the best definition from a linguistic point of view, and from a pedagogical
point of few I simply couldnt think of an alternative way to tackle the topic of adverbs.
But anyways the students seemed to soak the information in like a sponge, and when I was
showing them how wonderfully this definition worked by explaining and discussing my own
prepared examples, I felt that this traditional way of teaching might not only be the only way
to teach grammar, but how knows may be also the best way to do job.
Then came the time to practice, and my attitude changed immediately, it became very soon
clear that the students, who had to underline in their first task all the adjectives and adverbs
in a text, where completely overstrained by the task. They were trying to apply the vague
definition of an adverb to the text and got completely confused by it, and they were not the
only ones. Let me give an example:

Student: Herr Professor, I dont understand which one is an adjective and which
one is an adverb
Teacher: Let me see: The soup is nearly hot enough. So what do you think?
Student: nearly is an adverb because it has a -ly. But I dont know about hot and
enough
Teacher: Not everything that has no -ly is an adjective, it depends what the
words describe
What do you think are these words describing?
Student: Hmm I dont know, hot describes how the soup is, so it is describing the
is, and is is a verb
but hot has no ly, so maybe hot is an adverb???
Teacher: (I had to think) But it describes the soup, its a hot soup. So hot is an
adjective
Student: And enough what is enough describing??
I was stumped at this point and couldnt give the student a satisfying answer. But luckily a
question of another confused student saved me from my embarrassing silence. Overall, the
whole lesson wasted away with me somehow trying to defend my mysterious definition of an
adverb and to somehow show that you can apply it to reality: What is describing what? Why
is this a special case and why is that not? Why is this more like a noun and that verb?

In the end we spent all lesson discussing language instead of using it and I got the feeling
that my students where afterwards more confused about all those grammatical terms and a
apparently absurdly complicated grammar rules than ever before, or at least I was.

1.2 The central problem of the traditional approach

Starting with hollow forms and wasting time with overly complex theory
I walked away from this lesson with the feeling that I have completely wasted my own time as
well as the time of my students in that classroom, engaged in purely theoretical discussions
that seemed to lead nowhere and was asking myself: What has gone wrong?
According to Newby the whole thing was a misconception from the very start as traditional
grammatical descriptions [usually begin] by setting up form categories, only then looking at
meaning; as a result, syllabuses were defined, and teaching materials organized according
to forms (Newby 1998: 3) That is why my mentor teacher asked me to teach adverbs and
thus the whole lesson was based on an grammatical from than rather on its meaning.
It is easy to understand why this approach is very tempting especially in the case of adverbs,
as adverbs are at first glance easily recognizable by their unique formal appearance (the
suffix ly) but have at the same time, contrary to their seemingly homogenous appearance, a
vast variety of different meanings. Introducing adverbs by the means of their formal aspects
seems therefore far more economic than listing all the various meanings adverbs can
express. Following this logic also most school books (see for example You and Me 2, Red
Line 2) choose to do it exactly that way: Adverbs are introduced as adverbs of manner and
the main point of this introduction is that adverbs are a different word class, recognizably by a
ly at the end and that other than adjectives adverbs describes verbs and adjectives and not
nouns. (See for example Red Line 2: 64, 148) This formal definition is classically followed,
just as in my lesson, by tasks that prompt students to discern adverbs from adjectives ( p. 64,
task 2). The focus is clear: get the form right and understand the function.
However, nobody seems to reflect if this theoretical meta-linguistic approach to adverbs is
even reasonable. Students preform following this approach highly complex tasks of
grammatical analysis that might even proof hard to linguists not to mention teachers, as seen
in my case. But what for? Students should primarily be able to use a language and not to
analyze it. (See Newby Handout: Austrian school curriculum). From this standpoint the
traditional approach, which has seemed so economic in theory, wastes in reality a lot of time

trying to ably and in the end to defend grammar rules that are at last neither clear nor simple
as Swan (1980: 48) would like them to be, if these rules should prove pedagogically relevant.
So, how could adverbs be better taught? Newby outlines an alternative in his C+C notional
grammar approach that instead of form starts teaching with meaning and promotes
procedural knowledge rather than declarative. Students should become thus able to use a
language and not to explain how it works (See Newby: 1998: 4)
2. An alternative way of teaching adverbs
But how does this alternative way of teaching grammar looks like? What is the notional
approach? And how can we teach adverbs employing it? First of all, if you are really to follow
the notional approach, it will never come to your senses to teach adverbs in one
homogenous block. From the perspective of a communicative approach teaching adverbs
has the focus all wrong, by emphasizing the form as binding aspect. The really important
stuff, namely how people are trying to bring their message across by using this form, stays
essentially out of the picture.
To avoid this basic misconception, the notional approach teaches grammar no longer as a
set of forms, as used to be the case in traditional teaching, but as a set of meaning (Newby
1998: 6) On the contrary, it familiarizes students gradually with all the different shades of
meaning out of the huge meaning palette that adverbs are and introduces meaning
categories one by a time. As Newby pointed out in his grammar for communication (1989:
142), this basic color sets which form the vast palette of adverbial meaning are manner,
degree, details, probability, opinion and frequency. These single meanings (Newby 1998:
6) are called notions and although they all share the same grammatical form they express
different meanings, and their introduction should be structured consequently.
So teaching adverbs in a communicative way would mean to introduce a notion at a time.
This way grammar teaching would be more like vocabulary learning. Pupils will be taught
for example that there is a wide range of different adverbs that express the notion of degree
in all its different meaning potential (Newby 2012: 8). For example, something can be
rather easy, fairly easy or very easy.
Thus, in one lesson student will just practice the notion of degree, and work on tasks in which
they should practice not just a form but a meaning embedded in a situation and secondly [..]
make meaningful statements which they relate to their own knowledge or experience
(Newby 1998: 11) This way students will spent their time producing language rather than
analyzing it: An outcome that should prove first of all motivating, as performing language is
clearly easier for students, than to engage in a meta-linguistic discourse, and is secondly in

line with the curriculum that clearly has an communicative focus (see AHS Curriculum). And
so after the initial notion has been practiced and is now part of the students procedural
knowledge (Newby 1998 : 4) a new notion for example that of frequency can be introduced,
and practiced and so step by step students will learn to use all different forms of adverbs just
by learning to express an always wider growing palette of meaning. And then someday
students will all of a sudden realize what they can actually already do with language, and
then looking back they might think to themselves that using adverbs is after all fairly easy.
3. Bibliography
Newby, David (2014) Handout: Intro. and Theory. Communicative Grammar in Theory and Practice

Newby, David (2012) Cognitive+Communicative Grammar in Teacher Education in: J. Huettner, B.

Mehlmauer-Larcher, S. Reichl, B. Schiftner. Bridging the Gap: Theory and Practice in EFL

Teacher Education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. 101-123

Newby, David (1998) Theory and Practice in Communicative Grammar: A Guide for
Teachers in R. de Beaugrande, M. Grosman, B. Seidlhofer, (eds.)

Language Policy and

Language Education in Emerging Nations, Series: Advances in Discourse Processes

Swan, M. (1994) Design Criteria for Pedagogical Grammars. In M. Bygate et al (eds.). Grammar and
the Language Teacher, Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall

Schoolbooks:
Gerngro and others (2001) You and Me (1-4) Vienna sterreicher Bundesverlag
Has Frank (2007) Red Line 2 Coursebook Vienna: sterreichischer Bundesverlag .
Newby, David (1989) Grammar for Communication. Vienna: sterreichischer Bundesverlag.